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This MoD file, titled UFOs - Persistent Correspondence - Dr David Clarke, holds Dr David Clarke's Freedom of Information requests and emails to the Directorate of Air Staff from 2005 to 2008. Clarke asked for the DI55 report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region and for Rendlesham papers. He also sought records about Nick Pope. Other items include an internal review that released redacted passages on plasmas, the MoD's statement that it had no report of the 2008 South Wales police helicopter sighting, and a 2009 disposal form.
“Works”36 pages
LOOSE MINUTE D/DAS/64/3/11 22 November 2005 DIST-GM OMS AD Copy to: DI BCR CG2 DAS- Sec AD ## FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST - DR DAVID CLARKE 1) I am writing concerning Dr Clarke's Freedom of Information request for a copy of the report produced by DIS in December 2000 entitled "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region", Volumes 1, 2 and 3 and the Executive Summary. I have now read the Executive Summary which you proposed to release ahead of the Volumes and while I do not profess to understand the technical or scientific information, I have the following comments for your consideration. 2) The summary contains references to what can and can not be seen on UK Air Defence Radar and discusses the possibility that our airspace could have been penetrated by potentially hostile objects. I think we should therefore show the Summary (and relevant parts of the report) to Wing Commander Section 40 CT and UK Ops - Airspace Integrity for an opinion on how sensitive this is now. I note UKADGE 1 (predecessor to CT&UK Ops) was on the original distribution of these documents, so it is possible that they also have a copy on their files. 3) There are references to flight safety aspects and a suggestion that past unexplained RAF aircraft fatal accidents could have been caused by the pilot being startled by the sudden appearance of an unidentified object immediately ahead of the aircraft. This could be interpreted as the MOD questioning the judgement of Boards of Inquiry convened to investigate these accidents and suggesting there may have been factors not taken into account. The fatal Mull of Kintyre Chinook accident in 1994 in which the pilots were found grossly negligent is still topical and DAS continue to receive FOI requests and correspondence from those campaigning to clear the pilots names. I believe at one time the possibility of a UFO in the area was suggested by some of the campaigners as a possible cause. 4) The summary also contains reference to plasma formations / technologies and "exotic technologies". You may recall when releasing the DIS letter dated 4 December 2000 (D/DIST/11/10) in response to Dr Clarke's earlier request we removed paragraph 3 as not relevant to the request. The main concern was that it mentioned that plasma formations have potential applications to novel weapons technology which you thought might still be sensitive and as it did not directly relate to Dr Clarke's request at the time, it was removed. Dr Clarke has asked us to reconsider the withholding of this paragraph and it seems pointless to continue to withhold it if we are going to release this information in the Executive Summary. 5) If you intend to release the Executive Summary in advance of the full (or partial) release of the Volumes of the report, care must be taken not to release information in the
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 160 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.